Managing Madrid Podcast · Managing Madrid

Mbappe's Injury, Kees Smit, And Real Madrid's 2026 Fate

·1 hr 8 min·4 clips

Should Mbappe have played that Copa del Rey game?

The first 2026 Managing Madrid podcast returns with the annual New Year's Eve mailbag. For the first time, it is presented live on YouTube. The questions come from several platforms, including Discord, Facebook, Patreon, YouTube, Twitter, and IG Stories. The host picks the strongest ones and cuts the repeats. Mbappe's injury is the main thread. The episode asks whether he should have played in the Copa game. It also keeps coming back to the obvious follow-up: what happens now. Transfer talk shows up early and stays in play throughout. The discussion moves from the injury itself into squad planning. It treats the current moment as a transition until new leaders emerge and players settle in. The tone stays blunt about how difficult leaders are to replace. The episode does not give spending a pass. It questions whether the club is using money wisely and whether it is spending on the right profiles. It points to the scale of recent spending and asks whether the choices actually line up. Ferland Mendy's renewal comes up as an example of a decision that keeps looking worse. Luka Modric is brought up as the kind of player the club might have kept for one more year if a midfield signing was really the need. That is not presented as a miracle answer. It is framed as a missed call. The sharpest criticism is about reliance on market opportunities. The episode argues that signing players who fit and moving when value appears makes sense. It pushes back against leaning on that logic almost by itself. That approach, the discussion says, leaves the coach with a jumble and then blames him when the pieces do not fit. The point is not limited to veterans and free transfers. It stretches to youth and other market-opportunity moves more broadly. The show suggests the same logic shapes too many parts of the squad. It keeps circling back to the idea that the problem is not only who arrived, but how the club expects the coach to build a coherent team from it. There is also a recurring irritation with decision-making that does not quite add up. The episode keeps asking why certain moves were made when other options were available. It treats that question as central to understanding Madrid's present, not as a side gripe. The live format keeps the episode loose and conversational in mailbag form. It moves through questions without pretending every topic can be solved neatly. That gives the argument some texture, and it leaves space for disagreement instead of forcing a clean ending. The host keeps returning to the idea that this is not just about one injury. It is about how the squad is built, how money is spent, and how the club sets the coach up to succeed or fail. The episode works best when it connects those layers instead of treating them separately. By the end, the conversation feels less like a reaction to a single bad break and more like a look at the club's larger choices in 2026. The injury is the trigger. The real question is whether the club's current model still makes sense. The episode also has the familiar feel of a club conversation led by people who have watched this story unfold for years. It is analytical, but not detached. It is frustrated, but still trying to reason toward something defensible. That balance is the point. Listener questions keep the episode tied to fan concerns. The format makes room for the obvious questions and the uncomfortable ones. It does not rush to wrap them in a neat theory. It lets them hang long enough to matter. The conversation keeps coming back to transitions, leaders, and profile fit. That gives the episode a larger frame than the headline injury story. It is about what kind of squad Madrid is becoming. The show also makes clear that market opportunity is useful when it is one tool among many. It becomes a problem when it is the whole plan. That distinction is one of the episode's clearest ideas. The final mood is more diagnosis than celebration. The club is not described as broken beyond repair. It is described as a team whose decisions need to make more sense than they currently do. That is a harder, better argument than simple panic.

As heard by us

Mbappe's injury opens onto a wider argument about Madrid's planning, spending, and priorities.

This mailbag opens with Mbappe's injury and then moves into the bigger Madrid questions around whether he should have played, what the club does next in the market, and how much of the situation traces back to squad planning.

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Why you'd press play

For when Mbappe's injury and Madrid's squad planning need a proper argument.

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